mathjax

Thursday, August 18, 2016

At 11:07PM, #DonaldTrump became weaponized

I watched the Fox News "Townhall" for #DonaldTrump hosted by Sean Hannity yesterday, and at 11:07 the candidate became weaponized.

What I say was a raw raw cheer show organized by obviously biased interests - letting people speak exactly how long their scripted responses were timed to last, I saw flags and freedom and all the stuff that appeals to emotions. I saw modified policies that made more sense and seemed more reasonable. And it was all aimed at Clinton.

And then I saw the most shocking, most eventual, galvanized, weaponized, worst thing of all: a reasonable-sounding Trump. Of course the transformation has been coming a long time, but he's now weaponized - his calm and demeanor attached to real facts about Clintons now make his effective range far greater and his denial-piercing attacks unstoppable against Clinton.

Clinton supporters are like fickle friends, they are going to hold their noses and vote in fear of Trump. +Dilbert Scott Adams is voting Clinton for his safety. But if she wavers too much or gets a political body blow they may just sit on the sidelines rather than vote. They will think their position will ride out 4 years.

Trump supporters are like rabid dogs. They won't just get in your face and yell at you to vote they might try to use your hand to vote for their guy if they could.

I predicted before +Dilbert Scott Adams that Trump would win. But what I see now makes it more likely he won't just win, he's going to paste her into a dark smoking spot on the carpet.

Here are the factors behind this prediction:
  1. Trump listened to angry voters and adopted their causes.
  2. Trump is malleable yet acceptable to Christian Conservatives. He is malleable and that also appeals to Centrists who just want results.
  3. Trump was all over the map and people didn't care.
  4. The fact Trump is more idealogically Democratic makes him less scary and more acceptable to people that just want jobs. Democrats may think they are winning but Clinton is more odious to right wingers than Trump is to left wingers. Polls are off ( see below).
  5. Trump's elliptical and plain speaking teflon-coated him against media salvos.
  6. Both Trump and Clinton are accomplished liars - that's a wash with most voters.
  7. Trump's got angry on his side.
  8. Trump has hidden voters - lots of people won't tell a pollster but they are voting for him. 
  9. Trump has new voters - the previous polls and number don't account for this and any poll of 1000 people is meaningless because they don't account for skewed reality, and those pollsters are lying.
  10. The DNC has been lying about their primaries numbers.  Go back to Iowa, go back to the first state before the hysteria and before things got serious. The DNC and RNC reported the same numbers. And yet look at social media, look at rallies, and look at how many more voters turned up for Trump. It's impossible they rallied the same number, it's unlikely they had that many people when Trump had not even won one state. He was a phantom threat no one took seriously, remember?  When the DNC went second, they lied- they ginned their numbers - to make them even with Trump. They are so lost now they are lying as much to themselves as the public.    Big mistake.
  11. To my surprise, the Clinton team went straight into buying and using TV commercials right after the conventions. Why? Because they are seeing numbers far far worse than what's reported. Because they wanted to shape the conversation and define their opponent. They thought it would work - they used the right strategy and right messaging. All executed perfectly.  And - and this gets better - all that money is moving the needle zero. Why? Because it can't make a dent. Clinton needs to be ahead so far she can survive a mistake in the debates. But that's not appeared. That money didn't buy her a chance.
So here comes weaponized Trump.

While Clinton seems to think she's been smarter, calling Trump a racist and  unstable instead of driving home issues that's about to change.  The problem is that off-handed divisiveness plays to the same people that are in denial of reality, they think those arguments are making a dent. Are they?

Clinton has set herself up for total failure: her campaign made this about how capable she is: she's the most experienced, more venerable, more grandmotherly, more nuanced candidate than Trump. They have framed Trump as not capable.

But if anything goes wrong, if she makes one mistake then she can't make that bar she just set for herself.

If riots continue, if the stock market crashes, if the terrorists attack on US soil her capability is tied right to the Obama White House. If she stumbles her words or - god forbid - refuses to answer those same straight questions about her corruption, her emails, her servers, etc. in a debate he will catch her in a lie and she will be done.

Her bar of credibility is set way, way high. Trump's bar is set at he reads from a teleprompter and stays on message. The right wing party of Canada (Conservatives) tried this in the last election and lost handily to a non-capable guy that showed up with his tie on straight. This strategy is not going to win you anything if you frame yourself as fully capable like that, but if your opponent exceeds the non compos mentis bar you've made the argument for him.

What if Trump looks like a reasonable manager? What then? You don't think Trump who's managed lots of workers for many years can't show up and look respectable for a 1 hour debate?

And worse, worse is that Clinton is an amoral liar that avoids all reasonable questions about her corruption; her standard response is it's all part of a smear campaign from the right. She and Bill have been besmirched for their many tireless deeds of the poor and downtrodden. She has been persecuted, not that's she's done wrong. This might play to her voters, but will it play to reasonable centrist voters?  NO. The electorate is far larger and more mainstream than either the GOP or the DNC.

Look at Clinton Foundation tax returns they spend more on travel than they do on charities. It's not going to take long to expose her corruption. She hasn't held a news conference because she can't handle the questions. The drip drip drip water torture of corruption is going to start spilling out. What exactly does she think those debates are going to be?


In sum, Clinton is going to lose and lose big. There is only one way to stop Trump now, and that's if enough people switch from Hillary to Governor Gary Johnson and maybe that will stop the tide of misfortune that comes next.

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